A Book of Gems
Choice selections from the writings of Benjamin Franklin

By Benjamin Franklin

Page 271

finds a âlaw ofconscience,â another âa law of love,â another thinks we are not underlaw, but under grace, but does not notice that Paulâs law, that we arenot under, is the law of Moses, and, that Paulâs grace, that we areunder, embraces the âlaw of Christ;â the âperfect law of liberty,â theâlaw of the Spirit of life.â Another man finds a law of expediences,more extended than the Jewish Talmud, or the unwritten traditionsof Rome. He soon has more opinions than faith, more expedients thancommandments of God, more charity than law or gospel, more lovefor the pious unimmersed than for immersed believers, more charitythan hope. His gospel consists largely of tuning-forks, note-books,hymn-books, choirs, organs, concerts, festivals, church fairs. He isgreat on themes not in the Bible; the unwritten word; the traditionsof the fathers. These are dead weights on the body. They are enemieswithin, sensual, not having the Spirit. We must meet them with the samearguments that cut our way through sectarianism forty years ago.

We must rouse the spirit of the glorious pioneer men who fought theearly battles, cleared away sectarian rubbish, built up churches allover the land and set them in order, and never stop till there is anend to all the subtleties and sophistries, and all the insidious devicesnow subverting âthe right way of the Lordâ and spreading dissensionamong the children of God. We must stop all the loopholes beinginvented for the introduction of _humanisms_, and _innovations_ of allsorts, put away from among us the corrupt, the enemies of the cause,and the worldly, and inculcate the pure teaching of the New Testamentamong all, and live nearer to it than ever.

We met all this twaddle about a printed hymn-book, a meeting-house,etc., not provided for by divine legislation, before we were in theChurch one year, from sectarians, and answered and exploded it. Now wehave men among us that talk of _progress_, _learning_ and an _advancedage_, who have _advanced back_, and are trying to build an excuseof the same matters for human legislation. They want to supply thedeficiency in the law of God by human law. With them there is no churchgovernment in the law of God, and, therefore, we must make one. Afterwe have governed the churches by the law of God, fifty years, they haveadvanced to the discovery that there is no church government in thelaw of God. What do they propose? To make a church government. Thereis a shorter road

Text Comparison with The Complete Works in Philosophy, Politics and Morals of the late Dr. Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 1 [of 3]

By
thus employing myself, I shall yield to the inclination, so natural
in old men, to talk of themselves and their exploits, and may freely
follow my bent, without being tiresome to those who, from respect
to my age, might think themselves obliged to listen to me; as they
will be at liberty to read me or not as they please.

By this it appears, that when the balls came together, the air
surrounding the balls was just as much electrised as the conductor
at that time; and more than the conductor, when that was reduced to
its natural state.

A late
piece of the Abbé Nollet, printed last year in the memoirs of the
French Academy of Sciences, affords strong instances of this: for
though the very relations he gives of the effects of lightning in
several churches and other buildings show clearly, that it was
conducted from one part to another by wires, gildings, and other
pieces of metal that were _within_, or connected with the building,
yet in the same paper he objects to the providing metalline
conductors _without_ the building, as useless or dangerous.

7thly, A bar of steel which is not magnetic, being placed in the same
position, relatively to the pole of the earth, which the magnetic
needle assumes, and in this position being heated and suddenly
cooled, becomes a permanent magnet.

[Illustration: (of the experiment above)]
When this experiment is considered, I think, it must fully prove
that the exterior surface of a charged phial wants electric matter,
while the inner surface has an excess of it.